Tuesday, April 28, 2015

My 4 sisters and I travelled to Adelaide to attend the 100th Centenary ANZAC Day march, Saturday 25th April. My uncle Ray, who is 91 years old marches every year. This year he was joined by his 'little brother', Colin who is 82 years old, as his carer during the march.

Crowds lined the streets of Adelaide, from North Terrace then onto King William Street...

The river Torrens...

The march began with the SA Police mounted unit on their beautiful grey horses...

About half an hour through the march, here is Uncle Ray (second from right) and Uncle Colin (far right). Not many left in Ray's unit now...

A close up. Ray wears his medals while Colin wears those of his father, Edward Turner, on his right breast...

Cross of Sacrifice...

Ray, 91 years young!

In 1980, when their father passed away, the two men made a promise to march together in the 100th Centenary ANZAC Day march. Promise kept!

After the march, we joined Ray's family for lunch at a hotel. It was wonderful to catch up with our cousins that we hadn't seen for 6 years and more...

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

I was at my sister's recently and her friend had made quince paste. With a glut of the fruit on her tree, she offered me some. I've never really even held a quince before, let alone cooked with them...

I do love Maggie Beer's quince paste, served with a sharp cheddar and crackers! This sells for about $6/tub.

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Anyway, a bag of quinces and a recipe showed up on my doorstep on Sunday so yesterday, I thought I'd better make some quince paste. Never waste produce gifted to you! Reading the recipe, it wanted me to cook the quinces for several hours then dry in a low oven for 10 hours! Too hard!

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I googled 'quick quince paste' and Julie Goodwin's blog popped up. I had a quick read and she had cooked her QP in 5 hours in her slow cooker. That sounded better. Off I went...

I started by washing, removing a few blemishes (I think some were wind fall fruit), cored and cut into eighths...then I gently boiled the fruit until tender. Skin is left on as that is where the pectin is.

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Once tender, I drained off the water and pureed the hot fruit in my food processor...

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Now the naughty bit - I had exactly 5 cups of puree (same as Julie G) so you add 5 cups of sugar to the puree!!!!

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Added it to my slow cooker and turned it on to high... (6.08pm)

(7.32pm) Starting the thicken. I stirred it every half hour...

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(8.32pm) Colour is starting to change...bubbling around the edge...

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(9.37pm) more colour change - stirring every 15 minutes now...

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(10.30pm) colour intensifying...bubble, bubble, bubble...

(10.49pm) I decided to turn it off at this stage. It was starting to almost burn between stirrings and it was setting on a spoon so I reckon it was done. I think my slow cooker is a hot one!

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(Photo of Julie Goodwin's quince paste)

Colour is very similar...

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I put some in a little ramekin which I will use up first...

The rest, I spooned into these little plastic tubs I had - perfect!

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Julie suggested leaving it out all night to cool...

...so I did just that. I covered it with a food cover and finally went to bed. Way past my bedtime!

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

It's Brianna holding our two kittens, Clyde and Bonnie - way back in early 2007...

Poor Clyde didn't see out the end of 2007 before he was hit by a car but Bonnie has survived living on a main road, she is a resilient outdoor mogster. We shut her in each night in our garage if she chooses to come home... (where she usually sleeps on the bonnet of my car !) but she roams free during the day.

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Gus cooked this recipe that was in the Who magazine. We didn't have fresh figs so we used dried ones. Equally as good!

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The pearl barley was a new thing for us. I can remember mum putting it in casseroles but I have never had it like rice. Pleasantly surprised.

After making the date loaf and biscuits on Saturday, I made choc chip muffins on Sunday morning. These went to feed our hungry workers who turned up for a working bee. Gus was thrilled with what was achieved to clean up the dealership. Men hoard all sorts of things but they ended up taking 8 trailer loads to the refuse dump.

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I finished watching Season 5 of Downton Abbey. I really enjoyed it and can't wait for the final Season 6 which will air in 2016.

Then I got stuck into resurrecting our aging CD collection. Men! They never put anything away! I had to pair up CD's with dusty, broken cases. Some of the covers, I couldn't even read because they were so dusty! We had a CD player in the garage for playing when we sat outside. We now have a new system that works through our wi-fi and iTunes. No CD's needed! We just need to get any favourite CD's into our iTunes files - that may take a while!

Anyway, here they all are, shiny bright and back in their cases and stored in a plastic stacker box in the shed. There were only about 4 CD's missing so not a bad result.

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My next job was prepping for the curry I wanted to make fir Sunday night dinner...

These curries are quite time consuming - assembling the ingredients, making each step in readiness for cooking...

I had to debone a small leg of lamb, make the curry spice paste which had about 10 spices in it plus cook the rice (to which I added dried cranberries, sultanas, cinnamon and hazelnuts to make a sort of Kashmiri pulao) and make a cucumber mint raita...

It came together very nicely, quite hot (I am still learning to judge the hotness of dried red chillies which are like fire crackers!) but delicious.

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Now it's Tuesday and I am off to try and buy a winter coat like the grey one pictured. We are off to the Anzac march in Adelaide this coming weekend and its going to be cold!

Joolz

About Me...

Welcome to my blog. I'm a South Aussie girl on the wrong side of 50. I'm a wife to a busy man and mother of two beautiful girls. I love to cook, bake & eat yummy (usually healthy) things, travel, follow blogs of interest and listen to mostly country music. We are empty nesters and soon to be avid campers!

My Recipes

I think the link is broken to these recipes. Click on one and if it doesn't work, replace http// with www. and it should take you to the recipe post. One's that aren't linked, I'm pretty sure if you google simply joolz and the name of the recipe, you will find it that way. I just haven't got time to go through each one and change the links.... :)